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This guide shows how to connect Looker to Coalesce Quality. Coalesce Quality reads the structure of your Looker objects through the Looker API, and your LookML through a Git integration. It then connects Looker to your data warehouse and transformation models (dbt, SQLMesh, or Coalesce Transform).To finish this guide, you need:
→ Admin permissions in Looker
→ Admin access to the Git repository of your LookML project, to add a deploy keyEstimated time: 15 minutes.

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Looker access

Coalesce Quality connects to Looker with a client ID and client secret. We recommend API credentials of a user with the Admin role. With admin access, Coalesce Quality also reads content owners and usage history, and finds the warehouse behind each Looker connection by itself. If you cannot give admin access, see Admin-less mode.
  1. Go to Admin > Users and create a new user with Add User
    1. Use an address such as quality@<your-domain>.com as email address
    2. Disable Send setup emails and Save
    3. Give the user the Admin role
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  1. Edit the user and create API credentials (see Looker integration docs for details).
    1. click Edit Keys
    2. click New API Key
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  1. In Coalesce Quality, go to Settings → Integrations → Add Integration and select Looker. Enter the Looker instance URL (e.g. https://<your-account>.cloud.looker.com), the Client ID and the Client secret.

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Configuration

  • Refresh interval (hours): how often Coalesce Quality reads the Looker API. The default is 6 hours.
  • Ingest personal folders: also read content in personal folders. Off by default.
  • Connection mappings (optional): map each Looker connection name to the warehouse integration, database and schema it points to. Coalesce Quality uses the mappings to build lineage to your warehouse. With admin credentials you can leave them empty.

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Admin-less mode

Turn on Admin-less mode if your API user does not have the Admin role. Give the user a role with these permissions: see_looks, see_dashboards, access_data, see_user_dashboards, see_lookml, explore and see_explores. In admin-less mode, Coalesce Quality does not read content owners or usage history. It also cannot find the warehouse behind each Looker connection, so you must add a connection mapping for every connection.

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LookML access

Coalesce Quality reads LookML from your Git repository.
  1. Create a Git integration for the repository of your LookML project. Follow the Git integration form instructions, then add the public key to your Git provider, for example GitHub or GitLab. The repository URL must be an SSH URL.
  2. In the LookML step of the Looker integration, add a LookML project. Enter the Looker project name, select the LookML Git integration you created, and set the refresh interval in minutes.
Add one LookML project for each Looker project you want to include.